House Vote Clears Way For $3.5 Trillion Budget Reconciliation
After days of frenzy and posing, the House of Representatives passed a procedural vote that will start the reconciliation process for the $3.5 Trillion Budget proposal:
House Democrats on Tuesday approved a roughly $3.5 trillion budget that could enable sweeping changes to the nation’s healthcare, education and tax laws, overcoming internal divisions in a debate that could foreshadow even tougher battles still to come.
The 220-212 vote came after days of delays as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) scrambled to stave off a revolt from her party’s moderate-leaning lawmakers. With the frenzy resolved, the chamber averted what would have been a political embarrassment to take the next step in enacting President Biden’s broader economic agenda.
The budget debacle also paved the way for the House to hold a vote on a second economic package — a roughly $1 trillion proposal to improve the nation’s roads, bridges, pipes and ports — by September 27. The new commitment cemented a deal to win over skeptical centrists, who feared the infrastructure bill otherwise would have been mired in significant setbacks.
The $3.5 trillion budget enables lawmakers to begin crafting a fuller legislative proposal, which Democratic leaders hope to adopt next month. The package is expected to expand Medicare, invest sizable sums in education and family-focused programs, and devote new funds toward combating climate change — fulfilling many of Democrats’ 2020 campaign pledges.
Party lawmakers hope to finance the tranche of new spending through tax increases targeting wealthy corporations, families and investors, rolling back tax cuts imposed under former President Donald Trump. Many of the ideas originate in the jobs and families plans that Biden debuted earlier this year.
“A national budget should be a statement of our national values,” Pelosi said before the House began voting. “And this will be the case.”
Democrats broadly support the goals of the package, which they hope to adopt through a process known as reconciliation — a move that allows them to sidestep a guaranteed Republican filibuster in the Senate. In a sign of the staunch opposition they are soon to face, every House GOP lawmaker on Tuesday voted against the budget, which also set in motion a chamber debate over reforms to federal election laws.
But Democrats’ tactics still require the party itself to stay united, a tough task given the political fissures that surfaced this week — and nearly sank the process before it could begin in earnest.
The deal means Speaker Pelosi promised, in writing, that the Senate version of the infrastructure package must be voted on in the House before September 27th.
So are we going with Biden is a brilliant political strategist, or are we going with he’s too far gone to find his popsicle? Reality seems to be leaning one way …Report
Sinema has already said she will not vote for the $3.5T budget described in the Senate budget resolution. Pelosi has promised the House moderates a vote on the infrastructure bill before the end of September. Absent some compelling change, all the pressure lands on the House progressives in four weeks.Report
I think the House will get a budget resolution done by the end of September. People continue to underestimate Pelosi and SchumerReport
The budget _resolution_ was done today (in the House). The budget appropriation will likely take months.
One variable is that there may be a change in which branch leads from here. I had thought that the Senate would lead because Sinema and Manchin are explicitly against the $3.5T number being thrown around, so the House would be hamstrung by not knowing how much money there was to throw around.
Now, there may be a sense of urgency to show the libs that there’s progress being made on the actual appropriation.Report
The House approved the budget resolution. Now the question is, will the Senate approve a budget bill — including dealing with Sinema saying she will not vote for a budget bill that conforms to the resolution — before the late September date that Pelosi has promised the moderates for a vote on the infrastructure bill.
Come the end of September, we will see if the pressure is on the progressives, who will have to decide if they will vote to kill the infrastructure bill because they don’t have the $3.5T budget bill as they said they would.Report
It’s gonna be tight as heck. It was always gonna be tight as heck, this is a really ambitious maneuver.Report
In the end the moderates folded like a house of cards and Nancy Pelosi threw some grade A shade their way:
https://twitter.com/DaniellaMicaela/status/1430232356766560256?s=20Report
Ah but for that brief shining moment, the Dems were in disarray and the universe was as it should be.Report
I’m not getting this at all, that the moderates lost or that anyone would perceive them as doing so. It’s pretty clear that they rolled the leadership and especially the libs.
The libs can free their hostage at the end of September or even shoot him, but they can’t keep holding him (the bipartisan bill).
I’ve seen some stuff from twitter libs to say that the House libs still have leverage, but what’s been circulated so far is vaporware.
So far, the House libs have threatened to vote down the highway bill. As they intended, they have used that as leverage to move the process on the reconciliation bill. Five weeks from now, that will expire. They will have to actually vote down the bipartisan bill, or let it pass.
One thing that I don’t think some libs have grokked so far, is that if the libs actually do shoot the hostage, then federal highway funding expires on Sep 30 and we’re in at least a partial government shutdown, with all the drama that goes along with that, eg back-and-forth jaw jaw about CRs and such. And no matter if you blame Congress or the President, it’s Demos holding the bag all the way. The upshot is, voting down the bipartisan bill forces does not clear the field for reconciliation. It forces Congress’ attention on other things, and might sap the momentum away from reconciliation.Report
Minor point of order – federal appropriations all expire 30 September, which would lead to either a partial shutdown or the CR ping pong you describe. That’s in no way tied to federal highway funds.Report
That depends on what’s been appropriated already by Congress. If the bipartisan bill passes, then the highway money is appropriated and that part of the govt at least is not in shutdown. I don’t know if anything else has been appropriated or not. Probably nothing.
In any event, there’s going to be some appropriations process, probably CRs, will have to be done before Sep 30 or shortly afterward, and whatever time is required to legislate that won’t be available for the reconciliation bill. So the fact there’s more functions of government to be funded for the next fiscal year beyond the Department of Transportation just slows down the reconciliation bill that much further.
Btw, the aftermath of this deal with the Demo moderates has just been absurd beyond belief. There’s been a few prominent libs who have tried to argue that the commitment to vote on the bipartisan deal isn’t really real. And on theory in particular says that Speaker Pelosi could hold up the bipartisan bill _after_ it’s been passed by the House and not send it to the President for his signature. I’m sure that’s going to get walked back or ignored in a day or two, but tbh I’m kinda hoping it’s not. I would absolutely love to see the libs try to pull that one off.Report
So nothing has yet been appropriated by congress for next FY. The House – which leads the appropriations process – has done full committee mark ups on all their approps bills, and the Senate has done some of them. Its worth noting that he highway funds in the bills you mention don’t actually fund DoT operations, so absent an additional piece of work we’d be in the funny/not funny position of having highway funds appropriated but no one to send them out to states.
I’ve been a federal oceanographer almost 19 years and I have yet to see an approps bill that wasn’t defense passed by 30 September.Report
Right. So the House libs (and anybody else for that matter) have five weeks to move the ball forward on the reconciliation bill before they have to decide to shoot their hostage, or let him go.
Except that part of that five weeks is going to be taken by horsing around with appropriations for current government operations. And, I think the debt ceiling is hit sometime around then as well. And other stuff I haven’t even mentioned.
There’s some online libs who are desperately trying to pretend that Nancy Pelosi didn’t trade away the libs leverage on reconciliation in her deal with the Demo moderates, though it’s pretty clear for me at least that she did.Report
The House and Senate will pass a CR in the last week of September and the President will sign it. Probably through mid-December is past is precedent. its already in a desk drawer somewhere. Ditto the debt ceiling increase. Pelosi and Schumer can run the process on those in about 48 hours each.
I also doubt Pelosi traded away any advantage she has in this fight. She’s too cagey for that sort of mistake.Report
She didn’t trade away her advantage, whatever that is. She traded away the libs leverage. Past Sep 27 or whatever, the libs can’t hold on to their bipartisan bill hostage. The reconciliation bill will either succeed or fail under its own steam.Report
It’s a non-binding resolution. She could totally reneg if she chose to.Report
The hell it is. It is a completely binding resolution, regarding the items it was about, eg the consideration of the bipartisan bill. That’s how they passed the rule (and resolution with reconciliation instructions). Without it those things there couldn’t be any meaningful reconciliation process.
It _is_ subject to the rules of the House, which has various opportunities for wiggle room that the libs think they can still use to maintain their leverage. But as a practical matter I don’t think so. Not only are those sort of magic tricks contrary to the prima facie meaning of the resolution, they are definitely contrary to the _statement_ the Speaker just issued in conjunction with it.
The big item up for next week, imo, is what the libs do once they figure out they don’t have the leverage they thought they did.Report
Odd then that they keep calling it a non-binding resolution. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/25/what-happens-next-with-biden-infrastructure-budget-bills-in-congress.htmlReport
Yeah, that’s the vaporware I was talking about in another comment. Libs are invested in believing they have the same leverage they had before. Over the next week or so, I think they’ll figure out that they don’t and they’ll have to decide what to do then.Report
Eh, I am dubious that they every had THAT much leverage. Did anyone seriously think that, in the end, when the chips are down, the left wing of the Democratic Caucus would vote down the infrastructure bill? Not likely, they’re not Republicans after all.Report
That’s a complicated question. Just for me, I believe their threats were credible, and to some extent maybe still are.
What is more clear is that the value for libs in making such threats was their ability to use those threats as leverage in advancing the reconciliation bill. The threats are worth much less in terms of their actual intent to kill the bipartisan bill.
And specifically because of that, that’s why the libs lost yesterday. The moderates successfully put them in a corner. Free the hostage or shoot the hostage, but either way the bipartisan bill is being decoupled from reconciliation.Report
We shall see!Report
At least in the Senate, any budget bill that is going to be handled under reconciliation rules has to conform to the limits laid out in the joint budget resolution. Going over those limits is subject to the filibuster. The House Democrats can do as they damned well please, but have to at least keep in mind the Senate situation.Report
Democrats in array. Pelosi is a force of nature. I also heard that the Rep Maloney who chairs the DCCC dropped by to visit and mentioned, casually, to some of the rebels how easy it’d be to drum up some replacement candidates in some of those districts or otherwise revisit campaign support.
The big crunch is still going to be getting everything done. This was a pretty complex and dicey maneuver to begin with. Clearing this particular hurdle is just a sideshow. The real work is sorting out something the House will accept and that Manchin and Sinema will line up behind.Report
Not just that, but it’s also not clear how much if at all the sausage-making process can be accelerated.
Eg, people have been talking about the reconciliation bill like it’s a real thing. Of course, in reality there is no reconciliation bill, we’re just talking about hypothetical possibility that sometime in the reasonably near future there will be one. And you can go all the way down the same way. In reality there is no framework agreement to write a reconciliation bill around. In reality there is no negotiations to make a framework agreement to write a bill around, etc, etc.
You should read the twitter account by Liam Donovan (LPDonovan). The good news for Demos is that he thinks the lib hostage-taking strategy is superfluous. They can get whatever could be gotten without it.Report
Well sure, ultimately it’s all just instruments and parliamentary niceties dancing around the reality of elected representatives talking to each other and trying to jockey each other closer to their own positions.Report
No North, I don’t think you’re getting it. It is all of those things but it is not _just_ those things.
And it is the _other_ things which will have an important impact on the timing of things, specifically the most aggressive earliest possible timing of things. In another case, we maybe could ignore that as basically irrelevant, except that libs perception of their own leverage is tied into those timing considerations, specifically wrt a clean vote on the bipartisan bill.
In the most obvious example, if hypothetically everybody agreed to pass a bill, it wouldn’t change the fact that there is no bill to pass. Before you can _have_ a bill, you have to _write_ a bill, and writing a bill takes time. And depending on which way the cookie crumbles, libs are going to have to come down on one side or the other for the bipartisan bill while the sausage is still being made for the reconciliation bill.Report
Sure but that was all true prior to this bill anyhow. The non-binding resolution doesn’t change that they have a lot to do in not a lot of time.
Pelosi obviously wouldn’t have agreed to it if it seriously complicated her existing timeline and this is merely a formal but legally forceless statement in the formal commitment. There’s also the informal deals the Democratic representatives are handshaking on which isn’t out in the open.
The formal deal is the one we can all see. The informal one, clearly, is “reconciliation will happen at the same time as the infrastructure bill, as agreed to prior. The bone we’re going to throw you is a formal statement, legally nonbinding but representing a public statement of our commitment, that you’re not going to get fished; that infrastructure is getting a vote. But, as before, that vote is contingent on you moderates delivering votes on the reconciliation bill as well.”Report
No you’re getting it, North, on a number of levels.
What was true before is that the House libs believed or were lying to themselves that they were going to get to vote on a reconciliation bill before or at the same time they voted on the bipartisan bill. Whereas at least for now, it appears that the whole scenario they were gaming against is going to happen, ie the bipartisan hostage is going to get released while the libs are left holding a bag of coulda shoulda woulda wrt the reconciliation bill.
I also don’t think that you’re getting that Schumer and Pelosi have been tactically lying for months wrt the timing of the reconciliation bill, especially Schumer. The reality is the reconciliation bill is 2, 3, 6 months behind the bipartisan bill, and there’s no obvious way to make up that time. Those lies represent aspirations and exhortations within the Demo caucus in Congress, and to libs in general outside of Congress, that they’re going as fast as they can. They really don’t represent reality.
As a consequence, there is no understanding among Democrats, formal, informal or otherwise, that reconciliation will occur before or simultaneous with the bipartisan bill becoming law. That became more clear yesterday. It is definitely true that there is hope and intention to that end from House libs, and maybe even the leadership but there is nothing at all to believe that’s actual reality.
Finally, these distinctions and words you’re throwing around, nonbinding, binding, formal, informal, legally unenforceable, etc, etc, those things could certainly be relevant in some circumstances but they’re not really in play here.Report
Heh, we’ll see by the end of next month but I think it’s very encouraging if you think it’s inconceivable that they’ll have their reconciliation bill ready to vote on by the deadline they’ve set for themselves. Pelosi would have to be lying to her caucus to… what… make them absolutely livid and risk both bills going down in flames? Seems like a reach.Report
Like I wrote before, if you want to know the state of play, read LPDonovan on twitter. He’s been the best public domain info on this for four months or so. If they’re on schedule to vote for reconciliation anywhere by the end of September he’ll tell you first.Report
The permanent Committee Staff on both sides of the Hill, to say nothing of Hair and Ranking Member personal staff, would like a word . . .
Just as draft Approps bills were in the drawer ready to go after Pres Bud was released (because that’s what staff do), the reconcilliation bill exists. Bet on it. You may not have seen it yet; R congress critters certainly have not see it yet, but it exists. Pelosi wouldn’t have run this gambit on vaperware.Report
I have no doubt that draft bills of some sort exist, but not the important ones. They don’t exist because they can’t exist. They can’t exist because nobody relevant has agreed to anything. Not just Sinema and Manchin, though they are probably the most important, nobody.
Or to put it another way, let’s say Ed Markey said a month ago, “We will spend $340 billion dollars over the next five years toward electrifying our over-the-road car and truck fleet and other priorities to reduce the threat of climate change against all Americans.” I promise you that on Capitol Hill there are at least a hundred different ideas of what such a thing were supposed to mean, _even assuming such a thing were to become law_ which of course is not a lay-in.
“We’ve already written the bill” No, buullshhiit you have.Report
comment rescue hereReport